A Bit of the Shakes
by KimberlyTheOwl
Summary: Missing scene from the books rather than the series, taken from "Commodore Hornblower". Slightly AU as well.


Author's Notes: This is a little bit that I've adapted from later in HH's career. I suppose they'll never make it this far with the movies, but one can hope.  
  
In "Commodore Hornblower" our hero is in command of a squadron which includes a warship (commanded by Bush, now a captain in his own right) and a number of small craft. Two of these smaller vessels are bomb-ketches, two- masted fore-and-aft rigged craft with their own mortars on board; very versatile indeed. HH uses them in an ingenious manner to temporarily drive back Napolean's forces just before the siege of Riga. Of course, you can read all of the details in the book, and I would encourage you to do so.  
  
But I hated the ending of that part of the story. HH, by this time, has become quite fond of the officers under his command – he really does seem to become more of a softie the older he gets – and he especially likes Lieutenant Percival Mound, the 20-year-old officer in command of the bomb- ketch Harvey. It's not hard to figure out why: Mound is an engaging young man and a conscientious officer, very good at what he does; he clearly admires his legendary commodore and even imitates some of HH's mannerisms (to Our Hero's amusement). He serves bravely and well under some rather unusual circumstances... and then, just when the reader is starting to like him as much as HH does, wham! Forester kills him off. He's got a nasty habit of that sort of thing.  
  
So: I hereby offer MY rewrite of this little episode... in which, instead of losing young Mound, we lose his ship instead and he gets to live. And hopefully, HH will herein have the opportunity to show us what he learned from the good Sir Edward Pellew about such topics as leadership, duty, and how one handles failures... not to mention the care and feeding of promising young officers. What goes around, comes around... there are no new stories, only new ways of telling the same wonderful stories.  
  
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"Sir Horatio! The Harvey... she's on fire! Whatever just hit her must have done it!"  
  
Hornblower felt his heart turn over. Only a few seconds ago, he had ordered the signal midshipman to send the withdrawal signal to the two bomb- ketches. They had completed their task, and completed it well. But until they were out of range of the remaining shore batteries, they and their crews were in danger. Now, it seemed that something – heated shot, perhaps – had managed to menace one of the little craft with deadly fire. On a vessel that size, the flames could spread quickly to the powder and shells... her crew, exhausted and stupid with lack of sleep and the excitement of the last few hours, might not be able to extinguish the fire in time.  
  
"What do you see, man? Speak up!" Hornblower fought the urge to pull out his own glass and look; he knew that the young midshipman's eyes would see farther than his own and he did not want to betray his own impatience and worry.  
  
"Flames are spreading fast, sir... the sails have caught, now. They're trying to fight it, but..."  
  
"Signal 'Abandon ship'!" If the powder and shells caught, all hands would likely die. The bomb-ketch could be replaced, but the highly trained crew and the very capable Mr. Mound could not be built in a shipyard. Hornblower had no idea whether there was anyone on board the ketch likely to pay attention to the signal at this point, but it seemed necessary to try.  
  
"Moth is launching a boat, sir... and I think... yes, I see men in the water. They're getting off of there, in a hurry."  
  
More minutes ticked by, during which the midshipman was able to tell him little except that the boat from the Moth was still picking up men from Harvey. Every minute that passed without an explosion, Hornblower knew, meant more time for his men to escape to safety.  
  
And then, the unmistakable roar of a large cache of exploding powder sounded in Hornblower's ears. It wasn't as loud as he had feared, and he realized the reason with a certain amount of mixed relief and chagrin. The Harvey had been firing shells steadily for the last several hours; she'd used up a large amount of her powder and ammunition stores.  
  
"What do you see?" he shouted again at the nervous midshipman.  
  
"I see the Moth... she was well clear. And... yes, there's the boat, going back to her. I can't see how many are on board, sir... but the boat's riding low."  
  
With any luck, they'd all gotten off in time. Hornblower looked down at his hands, which gripped the taffrail. They were absolutely white, and he could feel the small muscles of his hands and fingers trembling with effort. Suddenly, he could no longer stand to stay on deck waiting to see how many lives had been cost by his daring plan.  
  
"I am going below. See that the survivors from Harvey are brought aboard as soon as they return." There would be no spare room for anyone on Moth for any real length of time. "If... if Mr. Mound is uninjured," he could not bring himself to say, still alive, have him report to me as soon as is possible."  
  
Hornblower forced himself to wait in his cabin, assuming at least an outward appearance of calm as the minutes ticked by. To distract himself, he pulled out pen and ink and began to compose his report of the days actions. At the same time, part of his mind was engaged in thinking about the lost bomb-ketch and its crew.  
  
If he'd only given the order to withdraw a little earlier, both vessels might have returned relatively unscathed. As it was... Hornblower knew quite well that once the fire had gotten established, there would have been little that anyone could do to save the little ketch. If Mound had survived – and was not so badly injured as to be thinking only of the pain of his wounds – he was going to require a certain amount of special handling. The boy was bound to take it hard, losing his first command like this. Hornblower decided that he would try, as much as was possible, to treat the whole affair somewhat nonchalantly. If he, the commodore, could pretend that the fiery loss of a fighting vessel amounted to a routine matter, then perhaps Mound would be able to do the same.  
  
Finally, the knock came at the door. "Come," he shouted, annoyed at himself when his voice squawked unattractively.  
  
He gripped the edge of the table as the door opened, and made himself keep his eyes on the paper until he heard his visitor enter the cabin and close the door. Then he allowed himself to look up, casually.  
  
The nonchalant greeting died on his lips as he looked at Lieutenant Mound. The young man stood stiffly, awkwardly, in front of the table that served as a desk. His uniform, still sodden from its dunking in the river, dripped onto the decking. Scorch marks decorated his canvas trousers; both shoes were missing. Blood and burnt powder stained the boy's face and his fair hair, while his eyes showed the redness of smoke and of bitter weeping. With a mental shudder, Hornblower imagined what the evacuation of the Harvey must have been like: the flames, the noise, the terrified plunge into the icy river; and then, after being pulled into the miraculous boat from the Moth, the tears of rage and frustration as the doomed little ketch had disappeared in a gout of exploding powder.  
  
Hornblower jumped up and came around the table; he started to clasp Mound's hand but thought better of it when he saw the angry blistered burns on the boy's right palm. Instead, he took the hand gently in both of his, and rotated it so that the burned palm was uppermost.  
  
"Has the surgeon seen this yet?" He realized as soon as he spoke that it was a ridiculous question. Like any good officer, Mound had come straight to his commander to report... the state of his uniform and of his face was testimony enough to that fact.  
  
"No, sir." The young lieutenant's voice was hoarse and shaky.  
  
"Were you wounded anywhere else?" Hornblower frowned; Mound's uniform was liberally bespattered with blood.  
  
"No, sir. The blood is from Winters, one of my men. He took a splinter in the back, and it bled like nobody's business, sir."  
  
"I see." Hornblower released Mound's burned hand; the young man winced then and curled it up protectively at his side. With an effort, Hornblower recalled himself to the necessity of hearing his lieutenant's report.  
  
"What were our casualties, Mr. Mound? How many did we lose?"  
  
Mound took a deep breath. "Two wounded early on, during the attack... and one dead, in the... in the retreat."  
  
Hornblower sighed inwardly, and started to turn away to stare out of the porthole. It could have been much, much worse; they could so easily have lost the entire crew. But Mound was still talking on.  
  
"Sir... sir, they did tell you, didn't they? The fire... we couldn't put it out, we tried..."  
  
Startled, Hornblower looked again at the young man. Apparently no one had told him that the commodore was perfectly aware of the fate of the Harvey... or perhaps poor Mound was so fatigued and smoke-addled that he didn't realize that Hornblower already knew.  
  
"It's all right, Mr. Mound... I know. We were watching," he said softly.  
  
Mound didn't seem to hear him. The boy was only too obviously trying very hard not to break down in front of his commanding officer; tears stood in his eyes and he was gulping hard. "She's gone, sir... my beautiful little Harvey..." He reached up with his unburned left hand and rubbed viciously at his eyes. "I'm sorry, sir."  
  
If the scene had not been so touching, Hornblower might have smiled at Mound's plaintive remark. Fascinating the bomb-ketches might be, and certainly highly useful, but beautiful? The Harvey had been an odd-looking craft at best; rigged out as she was for her final assault she had been as ugly as a long-legged water bug. Yet she'd been young Mound's first command; Hornblower remembered well the pride with which Mound had shown him the operations of the mortar. No doubt, he'd seen his little ketch as lovely, and shock and grief would make the loss more poignant still.  
  
Hornblower felt a great wave of sympathy for the young man in front of him. He recalled his own first independent command, the disastrous affair of the Marie Galante. Less than two days on the little rice-laden brig, and she'd sank almost beneath him. His own folly and negligence had weighed heavily on him at the time. He remembered boarding the ship's boat after his men, and watching her go down... remembered the tears that had filled his eyes at the sight, and how he'd averted his face that his men would not see their officer's weakness. Even though, many years later, he felt the shame and the sense of failure that had nearly overcome him then.  
  
Pellew had been kind to him, after his return to the Indefatigable. The captain had brushed the whole affair off lightly, pointing out that the Marie Galante had been damaged, after all, and that Hornblower simply hadn't had enough manpower aboard to keep her from sinking. He never reprimanded Hornblower for not acting sooner to plug the hole in the hull, never made an issue of the money he could have gotten from the sale of the brig and its cargo. At the time, Hornblower had been grateful and relieved; it was many years later before he realized that many captains would have been furious or vengeful after such an outcome.  
  
Now, he looked at the distressed young man – boy, really – standing before him, and tried to think of what Pellew might say under these circumstances. Fatigue and shock, he knew, were playing a large part in Mound's reaction; yet guilt and fear – fear of the imagined consequences of failure – would be present as well. He needed to set those fears at rest as best he could; time and recovery would take care of the rest.  
  
All this passed through Hornblower's mind in a few seconds. He looked at Mound again; the young man had closed his eyes and stood shaking slightly. When had he last slept? Two nights ago? It was nothing for the young to go without sleep, Hornblower knew, but add physical strain as well as emotional shock to the mixture, and the hardiest young officer would not be functioning at his most rational. Looking closer, Hornblower could see fresh tears streaking the boy's face, and he felt his own throat tighten at the sight.  
  
British aloofness and imperturbability be damned, he thought to himself as he stepped closer to Mound. Heedless of the younger man's wet and filthy uniform, he laid a comforting arm around those trembling shoulders. He said the first things that came into his head.  
  
"It's all right, son... it's all right. You did well, very well indeed." He thought for a moment, then added: "You took the Harvey in under hazardous conditions, under my direct orders, and did everything that you possible could under the circumstances. You are not to be blamed for the loss of the ketch."  
  
Mound scrubbed at his eyes again, a gesture that made him look even younger than his twenty years. "Thank you, sir," he answered in a low voice. "I'm sorry, sir... I'm not really myself at the moment."  
  
"No apology necessary." Hornblower tried to sound cheerful. "By God, there isn't a one of us who hasn't had a bit of the shakes after a tense mission." He forced himself to smile. "I know that I've been in worse shape... and I've never had my ship bursting into flames underneath me." Actually, he had had that very experience, or one very close to it, but he hoped that Mound hadn't heard of that particular long-ago incident. And that had been a Spanish fire-ship, anyway, not the King's commissioned property entrusted to him. "It must be a bit like watching your house burn down."  
  
"Yes, sir. It was... exactly like that, I suppose."  
  
The physical contact seemed to steady Mound; he took several deep breaths and afterwards Hornblower could feel the boy's shaking ebb away.  
  
"You're dead on your feet," he stated. "Come on over and sit down, and get something to drink into you."  
  
Mound shook his head, clearly embarrassed both by his own weakness and his commodore's attentions. "I need to go see to my men, sir," he croaked.  
  
"Captain Bush will help you with that, I think. I insist." Giving the younger man's shoulders a final reassuring squeeze, he led him to a chair and placed a glass of sherry in his hand. "Get that inside you, and then give me the rest of your report."  
  
Heartened by the sherry – and relieved of the effort to stay on his feet – Mound was able to give him a summary of the action; there were no real surprises in his report. Hornblower did learn that in all the confusion, no one on the Harvey had seen the frantic signal from the Nonesuch ordering them to abandon ship. Mound had reached his own conclusions at about the same as Hornblower, that the little ketch was beyond saving.  
  
"All the more to your credit, for making a quick decision," emphasized Hornblower. "If you had waited longer, tried even a few more minutes to put out the fire, you might have all been caught by the explosion." He smiled at Mound, then, this time without having to force himself to do so. "Then I would be sitting here writing a letter to your parents about the exploits of their brave but deceased son."  
  
Mound actually smiled slightly in return. "Yes, sir. I'm glad you're not writing that letter."  
  
"Not half as glad as I am," joked Hornblower. "I've written enough of those for a lifetime." He rose from his chair, and waved at Mound to stay seated when the younger man started to rise.  
  
"I am going to go on deck and make Captain Bush nervous for a while with my presence. You... you are going to stay here and rest." Hornblower had thought this through during Mound's report. Of course, the young man now had nothing: no cabin, no cot, no sea-chest, no personal belongings except the clothing he now wore. They would make room for him aboard the Nonesuch; some officer would end up having to share his cabin, but Mound needed rest now. "I'll see that you're fed and rested."  
  
"Sir!" came the expected protest. "I can just go down to the wardroom and sling a hammock."  
  
Hornblower ignored him. There were times when the power of superior rank was indeed something to exploit, and this was one of those times. He went to the door and called Brown into the cabin.  
  
"Brown, Mr. Mound has had a trying day. Fetch him a good meal – from my stores – and see that he gets a chance to wash. You can loan him anything of mine that seems appropriate. And when he's comfortable, fetch the surgeon to see to that burn. And then you're to make sure that he sleeps." Hornblower grinned. "He's not to stir out of here for at least six hours."  
  
Brown grinned in return, obviously amused. "Aye aye, sir."  
  
Hornblower turned back to Mound, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'll pass the word to Captain Bush about more permanent accommodations for you; when you wake up we shall have you stowed somewhere."  
  
"Yes, sir." Even seated, Mound still looked exhausted. "Sir? Thank you, sir... for everything."  
  
Hornblower shook his head. "No. Thank you." He cleared his throat. "It has been my pleasure, and my honor, to be your commanding officer. I am glad to have you back safe." He removed his hand, and headed for the door, then turned back.  
  
"Rest well. You've earned it."  
  



End file.
